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The Thirtysomething Teen

It should be noted, Jen Doll writes in New York Magazine, that she reads plenty of things written by and meant for adults.

But they don’t always captivate me the way YA does. Those are the books I read in a one-night rush, staying up until three in the morning to find out what happened, and when I do, sighing in pleasure because the heroine really does get the guy, the world has been saved, the parents finally understand, or there is at least the promise of things working out in the end. Adult books may be great literature, but they don’t make me feel the same way.

There’s a moment in Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park, a book about two misfits falling in love, that captures it best. Eleanor reflects on the mix tape Park gave her: “There was something about the music on that tape,” Rowell writes. “It felt different. Like, it set her lungs and her stomach on edge. There was something exciting about it, and something nervous. It made Eleanor feel like everything, like the world, wasn’t what she’d thought it was. And that was a good thing. That was the greatest thing.”

Photographer Jaime Moore looked for creative inspiration to take photos of her 5-year-old daughter but found most of the ideas were on how to dress your little girl like a Disney princess, Rossalyn Warren writes in Upworthy. It got her thinking about some real women for her daughter to look up to, whether that be a pilot, a doctor, or even an astronaut.